


The Most Important Question

by FlorentineQuill



Series: Doctor Who Oneshots [2]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 09:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1935186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlorentineQuill/pseuds/FlorentineQuill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor wakes River up one morning with the most important question of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Most Important Question

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the fantastic NoOrdinarySouthernGirl

“River? River! River, wake up.”

River shifted under her blankets and batted at the hand shaking her shoulder. Cracking one eye open, she glanced out the window the TARDIS thoughtfully provided whenever they were parked planet-side. She let out a slow breath that made the curls on her cheek flutter. “Sweetie, it’s not even dawn yet,” she murmured, groping up along his arm just enough to tug him back down to the bed, where he could join her under the sheets, preferably to do something utterly wicked with those long, clever fingers or, even better, his mouth.

“Yes, well, your parents have this habit of getting up at ridiculously early hours for humans!” he snipped back in a hushed whisper. “So where did you put my bloody _pants_?” 

River blinked and sighed again before indulging herself in a luxurious stretch that might have been a tad calculated in the way that the blanket slipped from her shoulders, down the line of her spine. “It’s so delicious when you swear,” she said with a yawn.

“River!” His frantic whisper was sliding from worry and half-hearted amusement to annoyance. “Pants? Where?”

“Depends,” she mused, still half-asleep. “Did we get past the first staircase before you managed to peel my knickers off?”

There was a long pause and she could feel the pepper-laced sweetness of _chagrin-pride-pleasure_ seeping out from his shields. “I don’t remember,” he said after a moment and she laughed silently. “I was a bit _busy_ at the time,” he grumbled.

“Oh, I remember, sweetie,” she replied, shifting enough that she could smooth her fingers over the lean muscles of his upper thigh, skirting dangerously close to the crease of thigh and hip that never failed to make him twitch. 

“River, focus, please,” he said. “The last thing I need to have happen is for Amy to see me in nothing but my skin. Or for Rory to realize that you and I—” He cut himself off and she resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Once she managed to shut his brain off with sufficient kissing, he was all sorts of agreeable (and surprisingly flexible) but the hard part was getting him to that point.

“Have perfectly wonderful, legal, sex whenever we get the chance?” she pointed out. “Sweetie, I hate to break it to you but they probably have figured that bit out. Besides, it’s hardly like my mother hasn’t seen you naked before. As I recall, you were the one who stripped down to nothing in front of her during that business with the Atraxi.”

“I needed new clothes, that old suit was completely shredded and I told her to turn her back— Hang on, how on earth do you know about that?” he sputtered.

“I might have been running around as a felon at the time but I still managed to email them,” she said with a faint smile. “That was a particularly long one, if I remember right.” She leered up at him, just a little. “All those details, you know.”

“Yes, well,” he sniffed. “There’s knowing your clever, capable daughter, is having sex, and seeing proof. And it’s a documented fact that the paternal and maternal figures in a person’s life have this distressing tendency to reach for some sort of weapon when that proof is waved in front of their noses!”

“You weren’t planning on waving it in front of them, were you?” she asked and grinned at his outraged squeak. “Oh, calm down,” she said, stroking his thigh again, careful to keep her hand closer to his knee.

“I am calm!”

“Then stop hitting such high notes,” she replied, still petting. “If you were truly in any danger of death by over protective parents, do you think the TARDIS would let them anywhere near this bedroom?”

At this point in their time streams, they did have a bedroom together (though River still occasionally snuck on board when the visits from her errant husband stretched for too long and the walls of Stormcage started to close in on her, staying in the bedroom that she [with the TARDIS’s willing help] kept tucked away) but sometimes they didn’t make it that far. The TARDIS could only do so much when her occupants were paying no attention to where they were going and what they wanted beyond each other, preferably on the nearest flat surface.

“You tell me,” he sulked. 

She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, it’s not as if you two didn’t manage to communicate perfectly well before I came along.” She suspected that the Doctor downplayed his connection with his ship for one reason or another.

“She still likes you better,” he grumbled but his fingers crept out to stroke the nearest wall. 

“True,” she admitted and rolled her eyes again as she felt the TARDIS’s current mood (well, as moody as an eleventh dimensional being ever got) flutter somewhere between indifference, curiosity, and that odd sense of what-will-happen-if? that the Old Girl got at her most playful, never mind that she was perfectly capable of tracing out the timelines for herself. “And you may have a point. No helpful stashes of pants for you this morning, dear.”

The Doctor muttered something under his breath that crackled and groaned in ways that made the linguist-archeologist part of her shiver in all sorts of ways that he probably didn’t even realize. 

“There is another solution,” she pointed out after convincing herself that while she could probably coax him back to bed and all the wonderful, related activities therein, she did have other things to do today.

“What’s that?”

“Skulk back to your room or the wardrobe in a blanket or sheet and pray my parents don’t see you.”

“Mmph.” Just under his shields, she felt him running several different probability equations and charting possible TARDIS routes (with the subsequent probability equations of whether or not the TARDIS was feeling more helpful or mischievous) that would better his chances of creeping through, unseen. 

River waited for a moment longer and then sat up with a sigh. “Or, you could stay safely put and I will venture forth to fetch you suitable attire,” she said.

The Doctor’s eyes flickered down along the curve and line and interplay of shadows that made up her torso before he swallowed and met her eyes. “You were asleep,” he protested weakly.

“Yes, but someone took it upon himself to start wondering where his pants went,” she said, giving him a pointed look. “I’m awake now, in any case. Which reminds me—” She scooted closer and leaned into his personal space just long enough to press a gentle kiss to his cheek. “Good morning, sweetie.”

He beamed at her. “Good morning, dear.”

She gathered up the top most blanket, wrapping and twisting so that she had a slightly more elegant version of the typical morning-after blanket dress. It utterly failed to hide the dark marks that were fading into view, along the curve of one shoulder. “Be back in a few minutes,” she said, sliding her feet out on to the floor (thoughtfully warmed by the TARDIS) and standing. “Lay back and enjoy the lie-in.” She gave him a playful shove, just enough to send him sprawling back against the pillow, all jointed limbs and adorably mussed hair. 


End file.
